Lord Carnarvon on Tuesday opened some new municipal build- ings
at Newbury, in a speech in which he justified on political grounds the present tendency towards a revival of the passion for grand municipal buildings. The history of States, he said, was in a great degree identified with the history of their buildings, and so was the history of municipalities. When Athens was at its greatest, its population was hardly larger than that of New- bury, but the majesty of its buildings has never been approached. When the cities of Italy flourished most, their buildings excited wonder and admiration ; and now in England, "in the adornment of our provincial towns, in the creation of these public buildings, in their embellishment, in the raising of the standard of taste in art, I see distinctly the fostering of local patriotism and a distinct step towards higher political life." We are not quite sure about the higher political life, but we are quite sure about a more vigorous and brighter political life. It is not till it has great public buildings that a town is an entity at all, and the more pride its citizens take in its beauty, the more vigorous will be that sense of corporate life without which a city is but a collection of houses.
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